October 10, 2024 • 44 mins
A botched mob hit transforms Michael ‘Cookie’ D’Urso into an undercover informant, setting the stage for a takedown of the Genovese crime family.
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Mike Campi's new book "Mafia Takedown: The Incredible True Story of the FBI Agent Who Devastated the New York Mob" is available on November 12th, 2024 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave men and women who
investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select
group that is defined American history. These are their stories.
November thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, Williamsburg Social Club, Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
It's a scene right out of the movies. Cigar smoke
hung thick in the air as a group of men
faced off in a card game.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It was late in the evening. They were playing a
Italian card game called Continental.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The stakes were high, and tensions over one man's growing
debts were even higher. One man calls someone's bluff. Another
pulls a gun, and when the smoke cleared, two men
lay bleeding across the card table, one shot multiple times
in the back, another once in the head. The other
(01:18):
players cleared out ahead of the approaching sirens. If police
were looking for answers, it wouldn't come from them.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Everybody knew there was a lot more to it than
just some guy got shot in a social club.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
The San Giseppe Social Club was a wise Guy favorite,
and the double murder had all the markings of a
mob hit, except for one major difference. One of the
men had survived his wounds.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
The gun was so close to Derso's head that the
speed of the bullet as soon as it hit the
scullet came down his neck, so he wasn't dead, but
he was knocked out. They thought he was dead, and over.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The next several years, that survivor of a point blank
gunshot would plot a unique kind of revenge as a
secret weapon in the government's fight against organized crime, and
just might be the final nail in the coffin for
a generation of mob bosses.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
If you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I'm Aniseega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
My father should have been a dead.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law
and Order criminal justice system. In the years following the
commission trial, the New York Mob was like a wounded animal,
(02:59):
struggling but still dangerous, maybe more than ever, especially when
a man like Vincent Gigante could run his Genevese gang
from prison, and an army of made men were getting
wise on how to avoid prosecution. By the mid nineteen nineties,
the Five Families had taken significant blows to their respective leaderships,
(03:20):
but these were organizations that had survived crackdowns, mass indictments,
and even all out wars. Exterminating the mafia from every
corner of the criminal underground would not happen overnight. After all,
there were still plenty of up and comers ready to
step into vacant leadership roles and willing to unleash an
unprecedented wave of violence to secure their newfound power.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
My name is Christopher Blank. I was a member of
the Brooklyn DIA's office from nineteen eighty four to twenty
twenty three. I went from a line assistant to an
executive ADA in charge of organized crime investigations and grand
jury presentations and trials. I just started in this work
(04:06):
when Castellano got killed outside of Sparks.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
With his resume, Chris Blank is the kind of lawyer
who could probably walk into most law firms in the
country and write his own ticket. But for this recently
retired prosecutor serving his community, in this case, the people
of New York was his higher calling, especially when it
came to prosecuting organized crime.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Being a lawyer was never about making more money than
the next guy. To me, it was more about the
opportunity to do the right thing, and being a prosecutor
in these kinds of cases was to me the epitomy
of that kind of practice.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
During his career, he also learned that it can feel
like a never ending battle against an enemy so skilled
at self preservation.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
This applies across the board to all sophisticated criminals running
corrupt criminal organizations, whether they're Russian, Chinese, or Eastern European
or even street crime gangs that are becoming more sophisticated.
They have developed a layering system, a hierarchy system that
insulates the bosses from ever being prosecuted because they're never
(05:13):
the ones out on the street, on the front line
exposing themselves to law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And the shooting at the Williamsburg Social Club was a
unique opportunity to examine this hierarchy up close and ultimately
exploit its weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The Social Club was the actual social club that Sonny
Black and Donnie Brasco had their interactions.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
In Donnie Brasco was the name used by undercover FBI
agent Joe Bistone, who infiltrated the Banano crime family from
nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty one, resulting in over
two hundred indictments, one hundred convictions, and one great movie.
The club was already on law enforcements radar as a
(05:56):
monster hangout, but by nineteen ninety four, after the commission trial,
many were keeping a much lower profile than their predecessors,
and congregating clubs easily targeted by the FEDS was not
any mobster's idea of a good time.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It had now become a local, non organized crime oriented
Italian social clubber Italian guys from Neighborhood and Williamsburg got
together to play cards and have family events that wasn't
available to them in their apartments in their homes.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Which is not to say that the violence that erupted
in the early hours of that November day was unknown
to the neighborhood, which had long been a stronghold of
the Genovese crime family, but it was a reminder that
the specter of the mob had far from vanish from
the everyday life of ordinary citizens inside the club. The
first officers to arrive took in the crime scene. One
(06:49):
man was dead on the floor, shot multiple times in
the back. The other had a bullet wound to the
back of his head, but incredibly, he was still breathing.
Paramedics removed both from the scene, one to the hospital
and one to the morgue. Witnesses were scarce, at least
ones that were willing to talk to police. Cards and
(07:10):
chips were scattered on the floor, so detectives assumed a
disagreement over the card game turn violent, but given the
club's history and reputation, they also had to consider the
possibility that this was a hit. The first step would
be identifying the victims. The man in the hospital who
survived a bullet to the head was Michael Cookie Durso,
(07:32):
and the man in the morgue was his cousin. Here's
special Agent Mike Campy, a New York native who became
one of the FBI's experts on the inner workings of
the Five Families.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Michael Durso grew up in Brooklyn, the Green Point section
of Brooklyn. His cousin first cousin was Tino Lombardi, and
Tino Lombardi worked at Riggierio's restaurant. Eventually Derso worked at
the restaurant.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
As Chris Blank tells it, Derso Lombardi as more like
a brother.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
He adored his cousin. They were a team, and they
were as close as his cousins could be.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
But to detective surprise, despite their thick files unknown mob members,
neither Derso or Lombardi showed up on any of the
org charts of the five families, which, according to Campy,
is not to say that they didn't dabble in the life.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Growing up in the neighborhood. Derso was a tough kid.
He could bench over four hundred pounds. He was on steroids.
He did some time in prison for a check cashing scheme.
I believe he was on the news as Cashanova's because
they would sort of engage the tellers into conversation as
(08:46):
they were banging out bad checks.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So he's basically flirting to get over to commit the crimes. Yeah, yeah,
that is what I had not heard before.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
And they called him cashanovas him and his cousin.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Eventually, the two Kashanova's graduated from small time grifts to
loan sharking, bookmaking, and running illegal after hours card games,
all of which required an intimidating physical presence, which Derso
had in spades, and the tacit approval of the local
crime family, who would never let a good profit go
unnoticed without getting their cut.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Derso, who was a nicknamed Cookie, was very smart and
Lebarda was smart and were connected to a old time
geneviezk guys from Manhattan, Sami Paro and Joe Zito.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So Derso and his cousin were promising up and coming
gangsters with well connected friends, but they were not made men.
They weren't officially part of the family.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Over the course of the last eight episodes, we've talked
about bosses, under bosses, capos, and soldiers, but there's another
important cog in the wheel of organized crime. The associates.
Associates have a holy unequal partnership with sworn members of
a crime family. They may be partners in a criminal
scheme or racket, maybe even friends, like in the case
(10:08):
of associate Pite Savino and Vincent Gigante. But unlike made men,
associates do not benefit from the family's profit sharing or
their protection. In fact, some associates may even have more
in common with the victims of the mob than with
the mobsters themselves, because often their partnerships with the crime
(10:29):
family are not of their own choice.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
When you're hanging out with people affiliated with organized crime
and they love showing money, they want to pick up
the tab, they want to pay for things. That is
the process of facilitating an association with you. At some
point in time, they're going to tell you that you're
with them.
Speaker 7 (10:51):
All of a.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Sudden, you become a victim of extortion, and you don't
have a choice because over time, the implied threat is
your family's in jeopardy. See that's the thing about associates.
I try to explain, it's the mobster's choice. You're not
with the mob because you want to be. It's the
gangster that decides whether you're his associator.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
On associates like Derso and Lombardi aspire to be made
men equals with the ones extorting them, but in reality
they were pawns in a larger game, interchangeable and if necessary, disposable.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
One of the recordings I made that demonstrates the hypocrisy
The life was with Jackie de Ross. Jackie de Ross
was an acting boss of the Colombo family, and we
made a recording where de Ross identified associates as suckers.
They think they're in the life, but we.
Speaker 8 (11:47):
Just use them.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I believe that's almost a verbatim quote.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Ambitious associates were lured in with promises of profit protection
and the prestige of becoming made down the road, but
their existence was often much bleaker.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
There's so few associates that ended up becoming inducted into
a family, and it's because you need these other supporting
cast members to generate cash for the family, but they're used.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Which brings us back to the night at the social
club in Brooklyn where Derso and Lombardi ran their regular
card game.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
They were good up and coming associates of organized crime,
learning from their mentors and getting into their own little
loan sharking activity and paying tribute and eventually getting into bookmaking.
So they were on the rise.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
As you can imagine, Gambling was also a great way
to create repeat business, and two of their best customers
just happened to be mobsters.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Derso and Lombardi have a social club in Brooklyn and
Carmei and Poledo, Mario Fortunado, and others would gamble at
this club card games.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Polito and Fortunado were not as highly respected, although they
were also anxious to be thought of as tough guys
in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Carmea and Pallito was also a chronically unlucky gambler, and
he was up to his eyeballs in debt to Drso
and Lombardi, a predicament that might get a man in
serious trouble, but being a mobster kept him in the
game and presumably out of the hospital. But Polito resented
being in hawk and so he concocted a scheme to
(13:31):
clear his debts. The plan to ambush Drso and Lombardi
during a card game. Robbing the pot might even put
cops off the scent while netting Pollito a few bucks
to defeat his gambling habit. And because their targets were associates,
they didn't need permission from the boss, nor would they
likely face a serious reprimand. But as they would soon
(13:54):
find out, the hit would still have major consequences. Here's
Chris Blank and Mike can't be on how it all
went down.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Sally Lombardi and Derso, who were cousins and were very
tight were in the club, and Mario Fortunado and Carmin
and Polito were in the club. Mario his brothers run
the Fortunado Bakery, which is a very famous bakery on
Manhattan Avenue, not too far away from the social club.
They were playing a Italian card game called Continental. Time
(14:24):
went on and kids from the neighborhood came by. Their
reason for coming in the club was to shoot and
kill both Derso and Lombardi, those two guys for Anthony
Cherissulo and Anthony Bruno.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Because Derso was so muscular and had a tendency of violence,
they shot him in the back of the head first.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Lobardo was shot several times and he was killed. Cheri, Sulo,
and Bruno ran away, and Fortunado and Polito both ran away,
so leaving Derso down on the floor shot in the
back of the head and Lobarti down on the floor dead.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
In the ensuing investigation, local police failed to gather much information.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Nobody was willing to tell the full story of what
went down. They were trying to piece it together and
I'm sure they were shaking the trees with their informants
in the area trying to get answers, and they might
have had a thumbnail sketch of what they thought might
have happened, but not enough to bring to.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
A prosecutor and their best witness. Drso, even after recovering
from his injuries, was still playing good soldier and refused
to talk to police.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
The tradition in this case was you don't talk to anybody.
I think Derso felt that he would be able to
get satisfaction by bringing his case that Fortuneo him Pluto
should have to answer for the shooting.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
In other words, Derso thought he could get his justice
straight from the Genovise bosses for whom he had been
a loyal earner for years.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Drso was out running his organized crime life and trying
to get satisfaction from the Genevie's crime family when he
came to realize that Pleato and Fortunato were backed by
a different capo and he was a powerful Genevie's guy,
and continued to be a powerful guy to the end
of his.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Life, and so his demands for retribution fell on deaf ears. Derso,
not being a made member of the mob, didn't benefit
from the same oaths of protection or revenge. Despite the
indignity of that slight, Derso was willing to stay loyal
and stay quiet about who killed his cousin and left
(16:35):
a bullet in his skull. But soon his loyalty would
be tested again, this time thanks to a dispute with
a made man. Here again is Mike Campy.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Derso had betters gamblers that bet had in office, and
the guy that took the bets was I'm not making
this up, it's hilarious, was a guy named Johnny Zero. Apparently,
Zero realizes some of dersa those betters that bet pretty
big consistently lost, so he decides one day to set
(17:07):
the bets side rather than record them and keep the
money for himself. Well, the betters hit I think it
was about thirty thousand dollars or something like that forty
and Zero doubled down. So he did the same thing again,
now it was like seventy eighty thousand, and when Durso came,
he explained it, and that facilitated a call to Zero's boss.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Derso demanded that Zero's boss make good on what he
was own.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
He gets call from an unknown mail, and the unknown
mail describes how you can't touch my guy. Don't ever
touch my guy. Now he doesn't identify himself, and Derso
finds it insulting. He goes back to the office, calls
the unknown mail up on the phone, and basically in
a vulgar, disrespectful manner, says, I can't beat your guy,
(17:58):
and he proceeds to give Johnny zero of beating. So
Derso basically hangs up on this guy because he felt
that he was disrespected.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The confrontation earned Derso a quick reprimand from a portly
Geneviz capo known as Sammy Meatballs.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
He gets a call from Sammy Meatballs directing him to
come down immediately to meet with him. He goes down
to see Sammy in Little Italy and Sammy describes how
Frank Farbi Surperco is the current acting plust of the
Genevese family. Nobody in the Genovese family really knows but
a select few, and apparently Derso insulted Farbi on the phone.
(18:42):
It was Farbi that was on the phone calling Derso,
and Farbi wants to kill Derso.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Derso had been in the dark that the guy on
the other end of the phone was the acting Genevi's boss.
He had already survived one hit, he found himself again
on the Genevie's most wanted list.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
That was the second thing that rubbed Derso the wrong way.
It really infuriated him that he couldn't retaliate on his
shooting and his cousin's murder. And now you've got the
acting boss of the Genevese family wants to kill him.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
But his new Genevese enemies had underestimated the associate because
if Derso couldn't get justice their way, he would get
it another.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
That was kind of the last straw for Derso. He's like,
you know, I've done all these things. I've made all
this money for them. I've stayed quiet even though I've
been shot in the head and my close cousin has
been murdered. They've done nothing to help get to the
bottom of this or exact retribution for this on my behalf.
And now they want to kill me. So I'm done.
(19:48):
So he literally, on his own initiative, contacted the FBI,
came in and agreed to wear a body wire.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
After years of trying to earn his way into the
flo the Genevese crime family, Derso decided to swap sides.
Armed with a wire hidden inside an FBI customized Rolex,
Derso became an informant, swearing revenge on the men that
killed his cousin, but to get the goods and watch
them all go down, he had to stay alive. Despite
(20:32):
being just an associate. Michael Cookie Drso had been a
strong and loyal earner for the Genevies, but after the
attempt on his life, he knew exactly where he stood
in the MOP pecking order. Here again, his former Brooklyn prosecutor,
Chris Blank.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Deursa was smart. He understood what he was doing. He
knew why he wanted to be a member of organized crime.
He knew the benefits and he knew the costs. He
was successful at when this came down, he made a
decision that all the things that attracted me to this
are basically bs. Everybody's out for themselves, nobody's protecting me,
(21:13):
and I'm going to protect me and my family from
these people, and I'm going to come on board. And
I know what that means. That means I have to
tell the full story, hold nothing back, and do whatever
they asked me to do.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Derso was not held by any sworn oaths of loyalty,
but he surely knew that by cooperating with the FBI
he was risking his life.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I'm sure he didn't have to wear a wire, but
his level of anger at the organized crime figures who
failed to support him and back him up and get
retribution led him to want to go further than your
average cooperator and agreed to wear a wire, even though
that would put his life in danger.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Mike Campy ran point on the operation.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
My role in operating Derso was to generate criminal conversations
involving not only the Genevese family, but others that interacted
with the Genevese family.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
For Derso, it would mean making nice with the very
men who threatened to kill him and continuing to kick
up profits to the Genevese bosses who sanctioned it. But
Derso had learned a thing or two about self preservation,
and while the FEDS used his recordings to collect crucial
information about Genevi's inner workings, Derso never lost sight of
(22:29):
his own targets the men who killed his cousin.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And for the next two years, Mike Derso was probably
the most successful cooperator out in the street that the
FBI ever had, and these recordings were all kept quiet
until it became time for Drso to come in from
the street.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
As a result of Derso's cooperation, prosecutors issued dozens of indictments,
including the two men against whom Derso had sworn revenge.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The FBI took a renewed look at what went down
and decided they did have enough evidence to make a
case and present it to the Eastern District and get
an indictment of Fortunado and Polito.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
In the subsequent murder trial of Polito and Fortunado, Derso
took the stant and described Polito as a degenerate gambler
who conspired to kill him and his cousin to clear
his debts. But among Polito's many mistakes was leaving Derso alive.
Palito and Fortunado were convicted for the murder of Tino Lombardi,
(23:34):
but not long after their convictions were actually reversed, but.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Looked like a very solid case until a second circuit
got its hands on it and decided that the shooting
here was not a violent crime and native racketeering, but
a personal beef and therefore didn't fit the federal statutory elements,
and so they reversed the conviction, which was a shock
to everybody.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Meaning that the two men had to be tried again,
but this time in state court, which is where former
Brooklyn prosecutor Chris Blank entered the picture and would go
on to lead the case. The case continued on its
complex legal path, with a second trial, one acquitted and
one convicted, and then yet another reversal, but that deep
(24:21):
dive is a story for another day. By this time,
Derso had entered witness protection, but before he disappeared, he
and his roleex had also gathered evidence implicating a very
high value target, Vincent Giganti's own son, Andrew Giganty. According
to Mike Campy, a Genevie soldier named George Baron was
(24:44):
owed some money by an associate, but was sent to
prison before he could collect.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
When Baron went to prison, he facilitated a relationship for
Andrew Giganty with this individual, and this individual ended up
making tens of millions of day dollars with regards to
the seaport.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So when Barone pressed Gigante for this associate to pay
his old debts, Andrew gi Ganty balked.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
And they found it insulting that Barone was demanding this
money from this associate to the point that they wanted
to kill him over like a modest amount of money
that was owed to George Baron, like seventy eighty thousand.
I mean, Chintz kids and relatives were making four hundred
thousand dollars didn't have to leave their house. You couldn't
(25:31):
give George seventy grand he's owed. I mean, it's so stupid.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Instead, Andrew Giganty passed along the order to murder George Baron.
And just to give you an idea of how deep
Derso was when he was wearing that hidden wire in
his rolex, it was Derso himself that was asked to
do the hit.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
They were going to use Derso to kill Barone. And
so at this point it was all right, we're ready
to take it down. We've got sufficient evidence to charge
Andrew Gigante, multiple players, including George Baron, who ultimately cooperated,
and nobody expected Baron to cooperate. I think he realized
the hypocrisy the life.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
It was another win for the Feds, but even more importantly,
it was evidence that convicted Geneve's boss, Vincent the Chin Giganti,
was still calling the shots from prison and using his
son Andrew as his intermediary on the streets. And remember,
Giganty was only serving a sentence of twelve years, so
(26:37):
prosecutors had every reason to try and find ways to
keep him in jail. Implicating him in a conspiracy with
his son was a good place to start. Here's his daughter,
Rita Giganty. They needed something to keep him there, otherwise
he was getting out, and according to investigators, he was
staying busy in prison, using his sons to rely his
(27:00):
orders to the rest of the family.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
They were not made men. I won't even say that
they worked for him. I would say that they were
just involved by being the extension of his children. And
if he said to them, go do this, go talk
to this one, go talk to that one.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
They would go.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Never in order to do anything, you know, drassically kills someone.
My father would never allow for that.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Vincent Chin Gigante, he did not induct his sons because
he did not want law enforcement scrutiny on them based
on that title of being a member at CAPO. On
a level, it was very cautious and I think right.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
But whatever cover Gigante thought he had provided his sons,
Andrew's involvement as intermediary provided a crucial point of leverage
against the Genepese boss using the DERSA wires. The government
decided to build an obstruction case against Andrew Giganty instead
about proving once and for all that Vincent gi Ganty
(28:01):
was still the man in control.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
I just figured, let me get the prison calls and
I'll show he's running the show, and it.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Would be one of those very phone calls on a
very fateful day that would give the government an unexpected assist.
September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
We were in the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (28:36):
My sisters were with me, and I said to my mom,
what movie are you watching? Because I saw the first
tower go down, and she goes, we are talking about that,
I'm watching the news, and then all of a sudden
I turned it up and we realized. Everybody realized what
was happening. Within ten minutes after that phone rang and
(28:57):
he's on the other end like a nervous wreck. Are
the kids okay? Is anybody in the city right now?
Because you know, he wanted to be reassured. So he
was on the phone for a while and he's talking
completely normal with my mother and they were talking like
a conversation like me and you were talking.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And that was it.
Speaker 6 (29:17):
That's that's how it all came down.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
When we got the prison call. So was Chin calling
his family on nine to eleven to ask if everybody
was okay, And so it was like, let's charge him
with obstruction.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Remember, Giganty was still claiming he was too mentally unfit
to be a criminal mastermind, but the call to his
family blew the charade. Here's prosecutor Andrew Weisman, the man
who had first convinced a judge in nineteen ninety seven
that Giganty was competent to stand trial.
Speaker 8 (29:53):
We ended up bringing a second charge against Giganty for
obstruction for lying to the court repeatedly about his mental condition,
and he ended up pleading guilty to that. Part of
the reason he was charged was prosecutors take really seriously
(30:14):
lying to prosecutors, lying to FBI agents, lying to the court,
obstruction of court processes, because that's our lifeblood, how we
build cases. It acts to give a deterrent to those
people who think they can sort of hop on the
stand or come in and meet with you and lie
without any.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
Sort of risk.
Speaker 8 (30:34):
The second reason is because the sentence was really not appropriate.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
They basically told him, we have you on tape, you
completely normal. Your whole family is talking to you like
you're normal. So we're going to go after them for
obstruction of justice if you don't say exactly who you
are and what you've done.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And this time the government held the ultimate upper hand.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Once they told him he was coming after the family
for obstruction of justice, he just admitted everything at that
point and that was it. Everything ended. It was like, okay,
whatever you want, and he gave him all the information
that they wanted, and that's how it all came about.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
In the end, Vincent Giganty put his blood family in
front of his crime family. He agreed to plead guilty
to obstruction charges, a plea deal that would spare his
wife and daughter from prosecution, but his son Andrew, who
Giganty had tried so hard to protect, would have to
face the music.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Here's my campy, I charged Andrew Giganty, and I was
at the arrest of Andrew Giaghatty at his house, and
I remember how the jury box was filled with press
to watch his statement and then watch Andrew and Chin
plead guilty together. That day.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was an unprecedented capitulation by a mafia bos.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
It was like Chin basically acknowledging in a single word
answers to the judge that he faked his crazy act
for decades. And then he asked if he and the
Sun could meet each other because they may not see
each other again they're going to different prisons. And so
the judge allowed it and they met in the hallway after.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What was said between them was never recorded, but it
would be the last in person meeting of father and son.
On July twenty fifth, two thousand and three, Gigante's son
Andrew was sentenced to two years in prison and fined
two and a half million dollars for racketeering and extortion.
Vincent Giguanty was sentenced to an additional three years. Two
(32:45):
years later, at the age of seventy seven, he died
in a Springfield, Missouri prison hospital.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
I was in my office it was after hours, and
I got the phone call. That was my sister who
called me and told me, and I dropped the phone
just comen't believe it. And I hear my mother hysterical
in the background, and I just said to her, get
off the phone with me. I'm coming home. I was
(33:15):
very much at peace with it because he was at peace,
and I knew he didn't have his ego attached him anymore.
Was I hurt, Yes? Did I cry?
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (33:25):
But it was more about my mother than it was
about anything for me to be there for her, because
I know.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
She was going to be devastated.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
In the years after her father died, Rita reflected on
the kind of man he was, the pain and damage
he had caused in her own ability to survive that trauma,
feelings that culminated in a revealing memoir entitled The Godfather's Daughter.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
It wasn't until seven years after he passed did I
publish it in two thoyd and twelve. If I was
able to come through a set of sircumstances that were
unbearable like that, that I can help others heal or
empower others to know that they have the ability to
do that, and The amount of people that I helped
(34:13):
is why I did it.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
In the end, Michael Derso's testimony helped convict more than
seventy mobsters and associates, including Gigante. For his cooperation, Derso
received probation and a two hundred dollars fine. Following his testimony,
he went into the federal witness Protection program. But even
(34:37):
with a new identity in an undisclosed location, the former
Mike Drso was not ready to drop his guard. In
twenty twenty, Drso wrote an open letter to his former
enemies that was published in The New York Post. In
the letter, he warned them against seeking retribution. Derso threatened
(34:58):
in the letter, and I quote, I am ready, able
and willing to defend my family and myself. A bat
and a knife won't help you, So if you come,
you better bring a gun. Mike Campy says the mob's
own success has also led to its demise.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
When you go back to the days, say the Lucky
Luciano you had, Lucky Luciano, Vito Genavis, albert Anastasia Meyer, Lanski,
you had a bunch of guys that sort of had
a bond. When you have a small handful of people
working together, I can see a bond, but when you
increase it by hundreds and thousands of associates, it's just
(35:41):
really dysfunctional and doesn't work the way you think it
originally was intended to work.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
With every informant and witness they flipped, law enforcement was
exposing major fault lines in a historically bulletproof criminal organization.
Speaker 8 (35:58):
The joke about the Columbus Family that one of the
defense lawyers representing somebody in the Columba family said is
that it was called the House of Pancakes, And I
was like, why, because everyone's flipping Omeerta.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
The mob's ancient oath of secrecy and loyalty to the
family was quickly becoming a thing of the past, as
soldiers and bosses alike struck deals with prosecutors to stay
at a prison, deals that involved ratting out their fellow mobsters.
Safe to say, it was not always good for their
(36:32):
long term health.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
There's one set of people that you can't cross because,
as Aldiarco, the acting boss of the Lucazi crime family,
told me, there's only one way you leave LCN, and
that's feet first. Once you're a member of organized crime,
an inducted member, you never leave, and so if you
become a cooperator, you're not no longer a member of
organized crime. You are simply what they consider an outlaw
(36:56):
and you will be dealt with when they get their opportuny.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And for those mobsters who stayed in, the impulse towards
self preservation was sometimes even stronger and deadlier.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
A lot of the criminals have either an ego or
a sociopathic personality where they're envious of each other and
they at some point in time they want to off
each other so that they can replace him in positions
of powers.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And with so many mob bosses being brought down, the
turmoil and violence inside their organizations was often left unchecked.
It was trust no one kill or be killed. For decades,
the threat to the mob survival came from law enforcement.
Now much of it came from within. And nowhere was
(37:47):
this more evident than in one of New York's oldest
crime families, the Bananos.
Speaker 7 (37:55):
The Bananos were an absolute mess. To put it bluntly,
they had had problems going back to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Jack Stooping is a retired supervisory special agent at the FBI.
A self described crime fighting fanatic who graduated from hardy
Boys books to the manual of the FBI.
Speaker 7 (38:17):
The first actual organized crime book I ever read was
Honor Thy Father, written by Gates Lease, and it was
about the Banano family.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And during his long career he would have a ringside
seat for much of the dysfunction within the once invincible
crime family.
Speaker 7 (38:35):
The Boss, the titular Boss, was now living in Arizona,
having been chased out of New York. They were rudderless.
There were these constant factions within the family.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
The Bananos had been kicked off the commission after the
Donnie Brasco debacle, which had allowed the FBI to infiltrate
their organization four years.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
As a result, nobody trusted the Bananos in the other
four families. They were basically shunned. The Bananos, in self defense,
because they had a generating income of their own, started
exploring other avenues. They were among the pioneers in the
boiler rooms and stock frauds and pump and dump schemes
on Wall Street. They got more heavily involved in narcotics distribution.
(39:21):
They just explored other avenues and nobody knew anything about
them because they were basically operating on their own, but.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Being kicked off of the commission and left out of
the subsequent Commission trial proved to be a blessing in disguise.
As the other families saw their bosses sent off to prison,
much of the Banana leadership was left largely intact and
out on the street.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
As a result of the fallout of the Commission case,
we the FBI started to develop quite a number of
turncoat mobsters. Virtually every cooperate reading witness that I interviewed
from other families, because none of the Bananos had turned
they said, well, I don't know anything about the Bananas
because they didn't have a seat on the commission.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
So in Banano boss Rusty Rostelli died in prison in
nineteen ninety one. It set the stage for the family's
big comeback. He would be succeeded by a ruthless former
capo who was determined to consolidate power and rebuild the family.
His name was Joe Messino.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
He was brutal. He was reputed to do his own work.
In other words, he wasn't afraid to use violence as
a tool against somebody personally, would just order somebody else.
He would participate himself if necessary.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
You may remember Messino from our first two episodes because
it was Messino who helped orchestrate the nineteen seventy nine
hit on rival Carmine Galante as well as the Three
Capos murder.
Speaker 7 (41:01):
Messino is basically putting the band back together. For lack
of a better term, the other four families were now
much weaker because of all of these turncoats and prosecutions
that were taking place, and so now it was the
Bananos who were filling the power vacuum.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And as the new head of the family, Messino was
arguably the most powerful mafia leader in the country and
the only full fledged New York boss who was not
in prison.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
He was the force to be reckoned with. He really
was de facto the boss and bosses. By this point.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
To the FBI, Messino would be known as Public Enemy
Number one. To the world, he would be known as
the last down.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Next time on law and order criminal justice system.
Speaker 5 (42:03):
Traditionally, an organized crime you sort of expect to go
to jail, but what you don't expect is when the
government takes your money away while you're in jail.
Speaker 7 (42:12):
One of the cousin Austra rules is if you vouch
for a guy and he turns bad, it's on you
and the penalty could be death.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
You start out with one individual, he then has so
much information. Once he cooperates, you're able to go after two, three, four,
and then it was like a domino effect.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. Our host is Ana Sega Nicolazi.
This episode was written by Walker LeMond and Ana Sega Nicolazi.
Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executing produced by
(43:00):
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
and Chandler Mays, and producers Jesse Funk, Nomes Griffin, and
Rima el Kali. This season is executive produced by Anna
Sega Nicolazzi, story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn
(43:22):
Talmich and Lukes. Dance editing and sound designed by Nomes Griffin.
Original music by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post,
Additional music by Steve Moore and additional voiceover by me
Steve Zernkelton Special. Thanks to Fox five in New York,
(43:43):
ABC and CBS for providing archival material for the show.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave men and women who
investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select
group that is defined American history. These are their stories.
November thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, Williamsburg Social Club, Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
It's a scene right out of the movies. Cigar smoke
hung thick in the air as a group of men
faced off in a card game.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It was late in the evening. They were playing a
Italian card game called Continental.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The stakes were high, and tensions over one man's growing
debts were even higher. One man calls someone's bluff. Another
pulls a gun, and when the smoke cleared, two men
lay bleeding across the card table, one shot multiple times
in the back, another once in the head. The other
(01:18):
players cleared out ahead of the approaching sirens. If police
were looking for answers, it wouldn't come from them.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Everybody knew there was a lot more to it than
just some guy got shot in a social club.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
The San Giseppe Social Club was a wise Guy favorite,
and the double murder had all the markings of a
mob hit, except for one major difference. One of the
men had survived his wounds.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
The gun was so close to Derso's head that the
speed of the bullet as soon as it hit the
scullet came down his neck, so he wasn't dead, but
he was knocked out. They thought he was dead, and over.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The next several years, that survivor of a point blank
gunshot would plot a unique kind of revenge as a
secret weapon in the government's fight against organized crime, and
just might be the final nail in the coffin for
a generation of mob bosses.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
You're not with the mob because you want to be.
It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
If you like your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I'm Aniseega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
My father should have been a dead.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is Law
and Order criminal justice system. In the years following the
commission trial, the New York Mob was like a wounded animal,
(02:59):
struggling but still dangerous, maybe more than ever, especially when
a man like Vincent Gigante could run his Genevese gang
from prison, and an army of made men were getting
wise on how to avoid prosecution. By the mid nineteen nineties,
the Five Families had taken significant blows to their respective leaderships,
(03:20):
but these were organizations that had survived crackdowns, mass indictments,
and even all out wars. Exterminating the mafia from every
corner of the criminal underground would not happen overnight. After all,
there were still plenty of up and comers ready to
step into vacant leadership roles and willing to unleash an
unprecedented wave of violence to secure their newfound power.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
My name is Christopher Blank. I was a member of
the Brooklyn DIA's office from nineteen eighty four to twenty
twenty three. I went from a line assistant to an
executive ADA in charge of organized crime investigations and grand
jury presentations and trials. I just started in this work
(04:06):
when Castellano got killed outside of Sparks.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
With his resume, Chris Blank is the kind of lawyer
who could probably walk into most law firms in the
country and write his own ticket. But for this recently
retired prosecutor serving his community, in this case, the people
of New York was his higher calling, especially when it
came to prosecuting organized crime.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Being a lawyer was never about making more money than
the next guy. To me, it was more about the
opportunity to do the right thing, and being a prosecutor
in these kinds of cases was to me the epitomy
of that kind of practice.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
During his career, he also learned that it can feel
like a never ending battle against an enemy so skilled
at self preservation.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
This applies across the board to all sophisticated criminals running
corrupt criminal organizations, whether they're Russian, Chinese, or Eastern European
or even street crime gangs that are becoming more sophisticated.
They have developed a layering system, a hierarchy system that
insulates the bosses from ever being prosecuted because they're never
(05:13):
the ones out on the street, on the front line
exposing themselves to law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And the shooting at the Williamsburg Social Club was a
unique opportunity to examine this hierarchy up close and ultimately
exploit its weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The Social Club was the actual social club that Sonny
Black and Donnie Brasco had their interactions.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
In Donnie Brasco was the name used by undercover FBI
agent Joe Bistone, who infiltrated the Banano crime family from
nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty one, resulting in over
two hundred indictments, one hundred convictions, and one great movie.
The club was already on law enforcements radar as a
(05:56):
monster hangout, but by nineteen ninety four, after the commission trial,
many were keeping a much lower profile than their predecessors,
and congregating clubs easily targeted by the FEDS was not
any mobster's idea of a good time.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It had now become a local, non organized crime oriented
Italian social clubber Italian guys from Neighborhood and Williamsburg got
together to play cards and have family events that wasn't
available to them in their apartments in their homes.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Which is not to say that the violence that erupted
in the early hours of that November day was unknown
to the neighborhood, which had long been a stronghold of
the Genovese crime family, but it was a reminder that
the specter of the mob had far from vanish from
the everyday life of ordinary citizens inside the club. The
first officers to arrive took in the crime scene. One
(06:49):
man was dead on the floor, shot multiple times in
the back. The other had a bullet wound to the
back of his head, but incredibly, he was still breathing.
Paramedics removed both from the scene, one to the hospital
and one to the morgue. Witnesses were scarce, at least
ones that were willing to talk to police. Cards and
(07:10):
chips were scattered on the floor, so detectives assumed a
disagreement over the card game turn violent, but given the
club's history and reputation, they also had to consider the
possibility that this was a hit. The first step would
be identifying the victims. The man in the hospital who
survived a bullet to the head was Michael Cookie Durso,
(07:32):
and the man in the morgue was his cousin. Here's
special Agent Mike Campy, a New York native who became
one of the FBI's experts on the inner workings of
the Five Families.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Michael Durso grew up in Brooklyn, the Green Point section
of Brooklyn. His cousin first cousin was Tino Lombardi, and
Tino Lombardi worked at Riggierio's restaurant. Eventually Derso worked at
the restaurant.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
As Chris Blank tells it, Derso Lombardi as more like
a brother.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
He adored his cousin. They were a team, and they
were as close as his cousins could be.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
But to detective surprise, despite their thick files unknown mob members,
neither Derso or Lombardi showed up on any of the
org charts of the five families, which, according to Campy,
is not to say that they didn't dabble in the life.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Growing up in the neighborhood. Derso was a tough kid.
He could bench over four hundred pounds. He was on steroids.
He did some time in prison for a check cashing scheme.
I believe he was on the news as Cashanova's because
they would sort of engage the tellers into conversation as
(08:46):
they were banging out bad checks.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So he's basically flirting to get over to commit the crimes. Yeah, yeah,
that is what I had not heard before.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
And they called him cashanovas him and his cousin.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Eventually, the two Kashanova's graduated from small time grifts to
loan sharking, bookmaking, and running illegal after hours card games,
all of which required an intimidating physical presence, which Derso
had in spades, and the tacit approval of the local
crime family, who would never let a good profit go
unnoticed without getting their cut.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Derso, who was a nicknamed Cookie, was very smart and
Lebarda was smart and were connected to a old time
geneviezk guys from Manhattan, Sami Paro and Joe Zito.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So Derso and his cousin were promising up and coming
gangsters with well connected friends, but they were not made men.
They weren't officially part of the family.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Over the course of the last eight episodes, we've talked
about bosses, under bosses, capos, and soldiers, but there's another
important cog in the wheel of organized crime. The associates.
Associates have a holy unequal partnership with sworn members of
a crime family. They may be partners in a criminal
scheme or racket, maybe even friends, like in the case
(10:08):
of associate Pite Savino and Vincent Gigante. But unlike made men,
associates do not benefit from the family's profit sharing or
their protection. In fact, some associates may even have more
in common with the victims of the mob than with
the mobsters themselves, because often their partnerships with the crime
(10:29):
family are not of their own choice.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
When you're hanging out with people affiliated with organized crime
and they love showing money, they want to pick up
the tab, they want to pay for things. That is
the process of facilitating an association with you. At some
point in time, they're going to tell you that you're
with them.
Speaker 7 (10:51):
All of a.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Sudden, you become a victim of extortion, and you don't
have a choice because over time, the implied threat is
your family's in jeopardy. See that's the thing about associates.
I try to explain, it's the mobster's choice. You're not
with the mob because you want to be. It's the
gangster that decides whether you're his associator.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
On associates like Derso and Lombardi aspire to be made
men equals with the ones extorting them, but in reality
they were pawns in a larger game, interchangeable and if necessary, disposable.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
One of the recordings I made that demonstrates the hypocrisy
The life was with Jackie de Ross. Jackie de Ross
was an acting boss of the Colombo family, and we
made a recording where de Ross identified associates as suckers.
They think they're in the life, but we.
Speaker 8 (11:47):
Just use them.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I believe that's almost a verbatim quote.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Ambitious associates were lured in with promises of profit protection
and the prestige of becoming made down the road, but
their existence was often much bleaker.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
There's so few associates that ended up becoming inducted into
a family, and it's because you need these other supporting
cast members to generate cash for the family, but they're used.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Which brings us back to the night at the social
club in Brooklyn where Derso and Lombardi ran their regular
card game.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
They were good up and coming associates of organized crime,
learning from their mentors and getting into their own little
loan sharking activity and paying tribute and eventually getting into bookmaking.
So they were on the rise.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
As you can imagine, Gambling was also a great way
to create repeat business, and two of their best customers
just happened to be mobsters.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Derso and Lombardi have a social club in Brooklyn and
Carmei and Poledo, Mario Fortunado, and others would gamble at
this club card games.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Polito and Fortunado were not as highly respected, although they
were also anxious to be thought of as tough guys
in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Carmea and Pallito was also a chronically unlucky gambler, and
he was up to his eyeballs in debt to Drso
and Lombardi, a predicament that might get a man in
serious trouble, but being a mobster kept him in the
game and presumably out of the hospital. But Polito resented
being in hawk and so he concocted a scheme to
(13:31):
clear his debts. The plan to ambush Drso and Lombardi
during a card game. Robbing the pot might even put
cops off the scent while netting Pollito a few bucks
to defeat his gambling habit. And because their targets were associates,
they didn't need permission from the boss, nor would they
likely face a serious reprimand. But as they would soon
(13:54):
find out, the hit would still have major consequences. Here's
Chris Blank and Mike can't be on how it all
went down.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Sally Lombardi and Derso, who were cousins and were very
tight were in the club, and Mario Fortunado and Carmin
and Polito were in the club. Mario his brothers run
the Fortunado Bakery, which is a very famous bakery on
Manhattan Avenue, not too far away from the social club.
They were playing a Italian card game called Continental. Time
(14:24):
went on and kids from the neighborhood came by. Their
reason for coming in the club was to shoot and
kill both Derso and Lombardi, those two guys for Anthony
Cherissulo and Anthony Bruno.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Because Derso was so muscular and had a tendency of violence,
they shot him in the back of the head first.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Lobardo was shot several times and he was killed. Cheri, Sulo,
and Bruno ran away, and Fortunado and Polito both ran away,
so leaving Derso down on the floor shot in the
back of the head and Lobarti down on the floor dead.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
In the ensuing investigation, local police failed to gather much information.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Nobody was willing to tell the full story of what
went down. They were trying to piece it together and
I'm sure they were shaking the trees with their informants
in the area trying to get answers, and they might
have had a thumbnail sketch of what they thought might
have happened, but not enough to bring to.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
A prosecutor and their best witness. Drso, even after recovering
from his injuries, was still playing good soldier and refused
to talk to police.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
The tradition in this case was you don't talk to anybody.
I think Derso felt that he would be able to
get satisfaction by bringing his case that Fortuneo him Pluto
should have to answer for the shooting.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
In other words, Derso thought he could get his justice
straight from the Genovise bosses for whom he had been
a loyal earner for years.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Drso was out running his organized crime life and trying
to get satisfaction from the Genevie's crime family when he
came to realize that Pleato and Fortunato were backed by
a different capo and he was a powerful Genevie's guy,
and continued to be a powerful guy to the end
of his.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Life, and so his demands for retribution fell on deaf ears. Derso,
not being a made member of the mob, didn't benefit
from the same oaths of protection or revenge. Despite the
indignity of that slight, Derso was willing to stay loyal
and stay quiet about who killed his cousin and left
(16:35):
a bullet in his skull. But soon his loyalty would
be tested again, this time thanks to a dispute with
a made man. Here again is Mike Campy.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Derso had betters gamblers that bet had in office, and
the guy that took the bets was I'm not making
this up, it's hilarious, was a guy named Johnny Zero. Apparently,
Zero realizes some of dersa those betters that bet pretty
big consistently lost, so he decides one day to set
(17:07):
the bets side rather than record them and keep the
money for himself. Well, the betters hit I think it
was about thirty thousand dollars or something like that forty
and Zero doubled down. So he did the same thing again,
now it was like seventy eighty thousand, and when Durso came,
he explained it, and that facilitated a call to Zero's boss.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Derso demanded that Zero's boss make good on what he
was own.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
He gets call from an unknown mail, and the unknown
mail describes how you can't touch my guy. Don't ever
touch my guy. Now he doesn't identify himself, and Derso
finds it insulting. He goes back to the office, calls
the unknown mail up on the phone, and basically in
a vulgar, disrespectful manner, says, I can't beat your guy,
(17:58):
and he proceeds to give Johnny zero of beating. So
Derso basically hangs up on this guy because he felt
that he was disrespected.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The confrontation earned Derso a quick reprimand from a portly
Geneviz capo known as Sammy Meatballs.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
He gets a call from Sammy Meatballs directing him to
come down immediately to meet with him. He goes down
to see Sammy in Little Italy and Sammy describes how
Frank Farbi Surperco is the current acting plust of the
Genevese family. Nobody in the Genovese family really knows but
a select few, and apparently Derso insulted Farbi on the phone.
(18:42):
It was Farbi that was on the phone calling Derso,
and Farbi wants to kill Derso.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Derso had been in the dark that the guy on
the other end of the phone was the acting Genevi's boss.
He had already survived one hit, he found himself again
on the Genevie's most wanted list.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
That was the second thing that rubbed Derso the wrong way.
It really infuriated him that he couldn't retaliate on his
shooting and his cousin's murder. And now you've got the
acting boss of the Genevese family wants to kill him.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
But his new Genevese enemies had underestimated the associate because
if Derso couldn't get justice their way, he would get
it another.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
That was kind of the last straw for Derso. He's like,
you know, I've done all these things. I've made all
this money for them. I've stayed quiet even though I've
been shot in the head and my close cousin has
been murdered. They've done nothing to help get to the
bottom of this or exact retribution for this on my behalf.
And now they want to kill me. So I'm done.
(19:48):
So he literally, on his own initiative, contacted the FBI,
came in and agreed to wear a body wire.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
After years of trying to earn his way into the
flo the Genevese crime family, Derso decided to swap sides.
Armed with a wire hidden inside an FBI customized Rolex,
Derso became an informant, swearing revenge on the men that
killed his cousin, but to get the goods and watch
them all go down, he had to stay alive. Despite
(20:32):
being just an associate. Michael Cookie Drso had been a
strong and loyal earner for the Genevies, but after the
attempt on his life, he knew exactly where he stood
in the MOP pecking order. Here again, his former Brooklyn prosecutor,
Chris Blank.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Deursa was smart. He understood what he was doing. He
knew why he wanted to be a member of organized crime.
He knew the benefits and he knew the costs. He
was successful at when this came down, he made a
decision that all the things that attracted me to this
are basically bs. Everybody's out for themselves, nobody's protecting me,
(21:13):
and I'm going to protect me and my family from
these people, and I'm going to come on board. And
I know what that means. That means I have to
tell the full story, hold nothing back, and do whatever
they asked me to do.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Derso was not held by any sworn oaths of loyalty,
but he surely knew that by cooperating with the FBI
he was risking his life.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I'm sure he didn't have to wear a wire, but
his level of anger at the organized crime figures who
failed to support him and back him up and get
retribution led him to want to go further than your
average cooperator and agreed to wear a wire, even though
that would put his life in danger.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Mike Campy ran point on the operation.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
My role in operating Derso was to generate criminal conversations
involving not only the Genevese family, but others that interacted
with the Genevese family.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
For Derso, it would mean making nice with the very
men who threatened to kill him and continuing to kick
up profits to the Genevese bosses who sanctioned it. But
Derso had learned a thing or two about self preservation,
and while the FEDS used his recordings to collect crucial
information about Genevi's inner workings, Derso never lost sight of
(22:29):
his own targets the men who killed his cousin.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And for the next two years, Mike Derso was probably
the most successful cooperator out in the street that the
FBI ever had, and these recordings were all kept quiet
until it became time for Drso to come in from
the street.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
As a result of Derso's cooperation, prosecutors issued dozens of indictments,
including the two men against whom Derso had sworn revenge.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The FBI took a renewed look at what went down
and decided they did have enough evidence to make a
case and present it to the Eastern District and get
an indictment of Fortunado and Polito.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
In the subsequent murder trial of Polito and Fortunado, Derso
took the stant and described Polito as a degenerate gambler
who conspired to kill him and his cousin to clear
his debts. But among Polito's many mistakes was leaving Derso alive.
Palito and Fortunado were convicted for the murder of Tino Lombardi,
(23:34):
but not long after their convictions were actually reversed, but.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Looked like a very solid case until a second circuit
got its hands on it and decided that the shooting
here was not a violent crime and native racketeering, but
a personal beef and therefore didn't fit the federal statutory elements,
and so they reversed the conviction, which was a shock
to everybody.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Meaning that the two men had to be tried again,
but this time in state court, which is where former
Brooklyn prosecutor Chris Blank entered the picture and would go
on to lead the case. The case continued on its
complex legal path, with a second trial, one acquitted and
one convicted, and then yet another reversal, but that deep
(24:21):
dive is a story for another day. By this time,
Derso had entered witness protection, but before he disappeared, he
and his roleex had also gathered evidence implicating a very
high value target, Vincent Giganti's own son, Andrew Giganty. According
to Mike Campy, a Genevie soldier named George Baron was
(24:44):
owed some money by an associate, but was sent to
prison before he could collect.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
When Baron went to prison, he facilitated a relationship for
Andrew Giganty with this individual, and this individual ended up
making tens of millions of day dollars with regards to
the seaport.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So when Barone pressed Gigante for this associate to pay
his old debts, Andrew gi Ganty balked.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
And they found it insulting that Barone was demanding this
money from this associate to the point that they wanted
to kill him over like a modest amount of money
that was owed to George Baron, like seventy eighty thousand.
I mean, Chintz kids and relatives were making four hundred
thousand dollars didn't have to leave their house. You couldn't
(25:31):
give George seventy grand he's owed. I mean, it's so stupid.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Instead, Andrew Giganty passed along the order to murder George Baron.
And just to give you an idea of how deep
Derso was when he was wearing that hidden wire in
his rolex, it was Derso himself that was asked to
do the hit.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
They were going to use Derso to kill Barone. And
so at this point it was all right, we're ready
to take it down. We've got sufficient evidence to charge
Andrew Gigante, multiple players, including George Baron, who ultimately cooperated,
and nobody expected Baron to cooperate. I think he realized
the hypocrisy the life.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
It was another win for the Feds, but even more importantly,
it was evidence that convicted Geneve's boss, Vincent the Chin Giganti,
was still calling the shots from prison and using his
son Andrew as his intermediary on the streets. And remember,
Giganty was only serving a sentence of twelve years, so
(26:37):
prosecutors had every reason to try and find ways to
keep him in jail. Implicating him in a conspiracy with
his son was a good place to start. Here's his daughter,
Rita Giganty. They needed something to keep him there, otherwise
he was getting out, and according to investigators, he was
staying busy in prison, using his sons to rely his
(27:00):
orders to the rest of the family.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
They were not made men. I won't even say that
they worked for him. I would say that they were
just involved by being the extension of his children. And
if he said to them, go do this, go talk
to this one, go talk to that one.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
They would go.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Never in order to do anything, you know, drassically kills someone.
My father would never allow for that.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Vincent Chin Gigante, he did not induct his sons because
he did not want law enforcement scrutiny on them based
on that title of being a member at CAPO. On
a level, it was very cautious and I think right.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
But whatever cover Gigante thought he had provided his sons,
Andrew's involvement as intermediary provided a crucial point of leverage
against the Genepese boss using the DERSA wires. The government
decided to build an obstruction case against Andrew Giganty instead
about proving once and for all that Vincent gi Ganty
(28:01):
was still the man in control.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
I just figured, let me get the prison calls and
I'll show he's running the show, and it.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Would be one of those very phone calls on a
very fateful day that would give the government an unexpected assist.
September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
We were in the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (28:36):
My sisters were with me, and I said to my mom,
what movie are you watching? Because I saw the first
tower go down, and she goes, we are talking about that,
I'm watching the news, and then all of a sudden
I turned it up and we realized. Everybody realized what
was happening. Within ten minutes after that phone rang and
(28:57):
he's on the other end like a nervous wreck. Are
the kids okay? Is anybody in the city right now?
Because you know, he wanted to be reassured. So he
was on the phone for a while and he's talking
completely normal with my mother and they were talking like
a conversation like me and you were talking.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And that was it.
Speaker 6 (29:17):
That's that's how it all came down.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
When we got the prison call. So was Chin calling
his family on nine to eleven to ask if everybody
was okay, And so it was like, let's charge him
with obstruction.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Remember, Giganty was still claiming he was too mentally unfit
to be a criminal mastermind, but the call to his
family blew the charade. Here's prosecutor Andrew Weisman, the man
who had first convinced a judge in nineteen ninety seven
that Giganty was competent to stand trial.
Speaker 8 (29:53):
We ended up bringing a second charge against Giganty for
obstruction for lying to the court repeatedly about his mental condition,
and he ended up pleading guilty to that. Part of
the reason he was charged was prosecutors take really seriously
(30:14):
lying to prosecutors, lying to FBI agents, lying to the court,
obstruction of court processes, because that's our lifeblood, how we
build cases. It acts to give a deterrent to those
people who think they can sort of hop on the
stand or come in and meet with you and lie
without any.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
Sort of risk.
Speaker 8 (30:34):
The second reason is because the sentence was really not appropriate.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
They basically told him, we have you on tape, you
completely normal. Your whole family is talking to you like
you're normal. So we're going to go after them for
obstruction of justice if you don't say exactly who you
are and what you've done.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And this time the government held the ultimate upper hand.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Once they told him he was coming after the family
for obstruction of justice, he just admitted everything at that
point and that was it. Everything ended. It was like, okay,
whatever you want, and he gave him all the information
that they wanted, and that's how it all came about.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
In the end, Vincent Giganty put his blood family in
front of his crime family. He agreed to plead guilty
to obstruction charges, a plea deal that would spare his
wife and daughter from prosecution, but his son Andrew, who
Giganty had tried so hard to protect, would have to
face the music.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Here's my campy, I charged Andrew Giganty, and I was
at the arrest of Andrew Giaghatty at his house, and
I remember how the jury box was filled with press
to watch his statement and then watch Andrew and Chin
plead guilty together. That day.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was an unprecedented capitulation by a mafia bos.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
It was like Chin basically acknowledging in a single word
answers to the judge that he faked his crazy act
for decades. And then he asked if he and the
Sun could meet each other because they may not see
each other again they're going to different prisons. And so
the judge allowed it and they met in the hallway after.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What was said between them was never recorded, but it
would be the last in person meeting of father and son.
On July twenty fifth, two thousand and three, Gigante's son
Andrew was sentenced to two years in prison and fined
two and a half million dollars for racketeering and extortion.
Vincent Giguanty was sentenced to an additional three years. Two
(32:45):
years later, at the age of seventy seven, he died
in a Springfield, Missouri prison hospital.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
I was in my office it was after hours, and
I got the phone call. That was my sister who
called me and told me, and I dropped the phone
just comen't believe it. And I hear my mother hysterical
in the background, and I just said to her, get
off the phone with me. I'm coming home. I was
(33:15):
very much at peace with it because he was at peace,
and I knew he didn't have his ego attached him anymore.
Was I hurt, Yes? Did I cry?
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (33:25):
But it was more about my mother than it was
about anything for me to be there for her, because
I know.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
She was going to be devastated.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
In the years after her father died, Rita reflected on
the kind of man he was, the pain and damage
he had caused in her own ability to survive that trauma,
feelings that culminated in a revealing memoir entitled The Godfather's Daughter.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
It wasn't until seven years after he passed did I
publish it in two thoyd and twelve. If I was
able to come through a set of sircumstances that were
unbearable like that, that I can help others heal or
empower others to know that they have the ability to
do that, and The amount of people that I helped
(34:13):
is why I did it.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
In the end, Michael Derso's testimony helped convict more than
seventy mobsters and associates, including Gigante. For his cooperation, Derso
received probation and a two hundred dollars fine. Following his testimony,
he went into the federal witness Protection program. But even
(34:37):
with a new identity in an undisclosed location, the former
Mike Drso was not ready to drop his guard. In
twenty twenty, Drso wrote an open letter to his former
enemies that was published in The New York Post. In
the letter, he warned them against seeking retribution. Derso threatened
(34:58):
in the letter, and I quote, I am ready, able
and willing to defend my family and myself. A bat
and a knife won't help you, So if you come,
you better bring a gun. Mike Campy says the mob's
own success has also led to its demise.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
When you go back to the days, say the Lucky
Luciano you had, Lucky Luciano, Vito Genavis, albert Anastasia Meyer, Lanski,
you had a bunch of guys that sort of had
a bond. When you have a small handful of people
working together, I can see a bond, but when you
increase it by hundreds and thousands of associates, it's just
(35:41):
really dysfunctional and doesn't work the way you think it
originally was intended to work.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
With every informant and witness they flipped, law enforcement was
exposing major fault lines in a historically bulletproof criminal organization.
Speaker 8 (35:58):
The joke about the Columbus Family that one of the
defense lawyers representing somebody in the Columba family said is
that it was called the House of Pancakes, And I
was like, why, because everyone's flipping Omeerta.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
The mob's ancient oath of secrecy and loyalty to the
family was quickly becoming a thing of the past, as
soldiers and bosses alike struck deals with prosecutors to stay
at a prison, deals that involved ratting out their fellow mobsters.
Safe to say, it was not always good for their
(36:32):
long term health.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
There's one set of people that you can't cross because,
as Aldiarco, the acting boss of the Lucazi crime family,
told me, there's only one way you leave LCN, and
that's feet first. Once you're a member of organized crime,
an inducted member, you never leave, and so if you
become a cooperator, you're not no longer a member of
organized crime. You are simply what they consider an outlaw
(36:56):
and you will be dealt with when they get their opportuny.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And for those mobsters who stayed in, the impulse towards
self preservation was sometimes even stronger and deadlier.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
A lot of the criminals have either an ego or
a sociopathic personality where they're envious of each other and
they at some point in time they want to off
each other so that they can replace him in positions
of powers.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And with so many mob bosses being brought down, the
turmoil and violence inside their organizations was often left unchecked.
It was trust no one kill or be killed. For decades,
the threat to the mob survival came from law enforcement.
Now much of it came from within. And nowhere was
(37:47):
this more evident than in one of New York's oldest
crime families, the Bananos.
Speaker 7 (37:55):
The Bananos were an absolute mess. To put it bluntly,
they had had problems going back to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Jack Stooping is a retired supervisory special agent at the FBI.
A self described crime fighting fanatic who graduated from hardy
Boys books to the manual of the FBI.
Speaker 7 (38:17):
The first actual organized crime book I ever read was
Honor Thy Father, written by Gates Lease, and it was
about the Banano family.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And during his long career he would have a ringside
seat for much of the dysfunction within the once invincible
crime family.
Speaker 7 (38:35):
The Boss, the titular Boss, was now living in Arizona,
having been chased out of New York. They were rudderless.
There were these constant factions within the family.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
The Bananos had been kicked off the commission after the
Donnie Brasco debacle, which had allowed the FBI to infiltrate
their organization four years.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
As a result, nobody trusted the Bananos in the other
four families. They were basically shunned. The Bananos, in self defense,
because they had a generating income of their own, started
exploring other avenues. They were among the pioneers in the
boiler rooms and stock frauds and pump and dump schemes
on Wall Street. They got more heavily involved in narcotics distribution.
(39:21):
They just explored other avenues and nobody knew anything about
them because they were basically operating on their own, but.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Being kicked off of the commission and left out of
the subsequent Commission trial proved to be a blessing in disguise.
As the other families saw their bosses sent off to prison,
much of the Banana leadership was left largely intact and
out on the street.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
As a result of the fallout of the Commission case,
we the FBI started to develop quite a number of
turncoat mobsters. Virtually every cooperate reading witness that I interviewed
from other families, because none of the Bananos had turned
they said, well, I don't know anything about the Bananas
because they didn't have a seat on the commission.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
So in Banano boss Rusty Rostelli died in prison in
nineteen ninety one. It set the stage for the family's
big comeback. He would be succeeded by a ruthless former
capo who was determined to consolidate power and rebuild the family.
His name was Joe Messino.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
He was brutal. He was reputed to do his own work.
In other words, he wasn't afraid to use violence as
a tool against somebody personally, would just order somebody else.
He would participate himself if necessary.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
You may remember Messino from our first two episodes because
it was Messino who helped orchestrate the nineteen seventy nine
hit on rival Carmine Galante as well as the Three
Capos murder.
Speaker 7 (41:01):
Messino is basically putting the band back together. For lack
of a better term, the other four families were now
much weaker because of all of these turncoats and prosecutions
that were taking place, and so now it was the
Bananos who were filling the power vacuum.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And as the new head of the family, Messino was
arguably the most powerful mafia leader in the country and
the only full fledged New York boss who was not
in prison.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
He was the force to be reckoned with. He really
was de facto the boss and bosses. By this point.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
To the FBI, Messino would be known as Public Enemy
Number one. To the world, he would be known as
the last down.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Next time on law and order criminal justice system.
Speaker 5 (42:03):
Traditionally, an organized crime you sort of expect to go
to jail, but what you don't expect is when the
government takes your money away while you're in jail.
Speaker 7 (42:12):
One of the cousin Austra rules is if you vouch
for a guy and he turns bad, it's on you
and the penalty could be death.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
You start out with one individual, he then has so
much information. Once he cooperates, you're able to go after two, three, four,
and then it was like a domino effect.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. Our host is Ana Sega Nicolazi.
This episode was written by Walker LeMond and Ana Sega Nicolazi.
Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executing produced by
(43:00):
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
and Chandler Mays, and producers Jesse Funk, Nomes Griffin, and
Rima el Kali. This season is executive produced by Anna
Sega Nicolazzi, story producer Walker Lamond. Our researchers are Carolyn
(43:22):
Talmich and Lukes. Dance editing and sound designed by Nomes Griffin.
Original music by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post,
Additional music by Steve Moore and additional voiceover by me
Steve Zernkelton Special. Thanks to Fox five in New York,
(43:43):
ABC and CBS for providing archival material for the show.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
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